


we played fate (sharp as glass and twice as bright)

by Archetype_ElectraHeart



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Fae & Fairies, Human!Steve, Multi, fae!Darcy, human!Bucky, pixie!Darcy, some descriptions of gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7278397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archetype_ElectraHeart/pseuds/Archetype_ElectraHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes is taken by the UnSeelie when he falls in 1945. They build him a new arm out of twisting tree branches and vines, but they take out his heart in order to ensure his fealty. He becomes the favorite knight of the Unseelie Queen.</p><p>Darcy is a changeling, her fey tendencies tempered by the humans who raised her, who lives with one foot in the human world and one foot under the barrow of the UnSeelie.</p><p>When she realizes the true identity of the Dark Knight, she feels obligated to tell Steve. When Steve takes off, half-cocked and self-righteous, to rescue his friend, Darcy is forced to chase after him if there is any chance of getting both men out of the barrow alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story will be (loosely) based on a drabble that I wrote for tumblr, which you can read [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6869887/chapters/15676771) if you don't mind a few vague spoilers!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter functions as a prologue to the rest of our tale, so Steve won't be present just yet.

Bucky Barnes fell from a train in Austria to land in the thick snow and musty pine needles covering the side of a mountain. 

He could not breathe, his lungs catching, his breaths rasping and desperate. His shoulder burned, blood slowly leaking out into the snow, melting it. Rivers of diluted crimson were running downhill, forming gory tributaries, but Bucky was utterly still.

 

He was still alive at twilight when they came out of the woods and took him.

  
***

 

He could recall very little of the in-between. 

 

He remembered the fall, he remembered his life afterwards. But he could not recall how they fixed him, what herbs and potions they must have massaged down his throat to heal his lungs and the dead frozen tissues in his extremities. 

He could not remember how they made the arm, the twisting, gnarled mess of branches and vines and leaves that had grown over his shoulder into an approximation of his lost limb.

He did not remember the moment that the Queen reached into his chest to pull out his heart, only the screaming agony that followed. 

Only the hollow emptiness that haunted him even now.

And, every so often, the steady, lonely beat of his heart wherever they had hidden it, and the way it cried and screamed at night, the sound echoing into his bedchamber.

 

The strangest part, he thought, as he listened to his heart’s cries beneath him, was that he knew exactly who his heart was crying for. He could remember all of them--Steve, his mother and father, Rebecca, Steve’s ma. He could remember every moment spent with them, but he felt nothing. Could not remember how it had  _ felt _ to be the one to brush his sister’s hair before she went off to school, or to be the one who curled around Steve on cold winter’s nights to keep him warm when the coughing got so bad the whole bed shook, but he could remember every moment of it in vivid sensory detail.

  
  


He served the Queen now, towards whom he could feel nothing but obedience. 

She gave him a sword, sharp and gleaming.  She gave him leather armor, magicked to the hardness of steel, that was decorated in tooled scrolling vines and ivy leaves. It started out a deep, rich brown, blending almost seamlessly with his arm.  
  


When she ordered him to kill the first time, he could not resist her. Although he could feel his own horror as the silver blade plowed through the sprite in front of him, could feel his own distaste as the crimson blood sprayed across his chest and splattered her shoes, he could not disobey.

He could not disobey when she ordered him to rub the sprite’s blood into the leather of his armor, tacky and still warm.

He could not disobey any of the other hundreds of times she made the same order. 

The blood turned his armor black, glossy and cruel. The members of the court began to call him  _ Der Finster Ritter,  _ leering at him as he followed the Queen through the halls like an obedient dog.

  
  


When his first mistress lost him to her American counterpart in a game of chess, his new masters kept the name: The Dark Knight. It lost something in translation, and when the American fae called him by his title it was a lesser species of malicious glee than that of the German court, who had been amused by his grim face, his glowering expression, his sombre mien. 

The language they spoke to him was the only thing that changed when he crossed back over the Atlantic.

  
  
***  
  


 

Darcy was thirteen when she went down the barrow the first time, led by a winged faery who lived in the woods behind her house down under the hill one twilit evening.

 

She could remember feeling overwhelmed at the press of grotesque bodies, at the heady scents of honeysuckle and mead and over-ripe apples, and the coppery tang of blood that coated the back of her throat and slicked the bottoms of her bare feet. She was by turns horrified and fascinated by the petty acts of cruelty that surrounded her--rivulets of hot wax being poured lazily onto the skin of a magically-petrified creature with bulbous eyes and pointed shoulders, thorn-studded manacles and collars on various lesser fae to mark them as servants.

 

She could remember being awed by the UnSeelie Queen, who had the kind of sharp, feral beauty that a pubescent Darcy still hoped she might grow into someday: crimson lips, full dark hair, milky white skin, intense eyes. The Queen had stood up from her bramble throne and pinched Darcy’s chin between her long fingers, tilting the girl’s face to one side and then the other. The close scrutiny made Darcy want to squirm, but she kept herself still, her eyes focused on the point just over the Queen’s shoulder where her knight stood at attention in oil-slick-black armor. Little Darcy had been concerned over his vacant expression, this man who didn’t seem to belong under the barrow in spite of his obviously magical limb, because it felt for a moment as though she had finally stumbled across a kindred spirit in this peculiar place.

Her focus was pulled away from the knight by the drag of a fingernail down her cheek and a rasping laugh from the Queen in front of her. “Such a peculiar little thing you are, changeling. Nearly human,” she murmured as she leaned in close, nearly nose to nose with Darcy. “Nearly, but not quite.” And then she made a gesture with her hands as though she was tearing an invisible piece of paper in front of Darcy’s face and Darcy’s vision blurred and her skin stretched and she felt as though static electricity was running up and down her skin.

When her vision cleared, everything was sharper. She could see every tooled line in the Dark Knight’s armor where he stood, could hear him shift slightly in surprise, could feel a rush of air against her back that made her turn around.

She had wings. 

Darcy froze, eyes wide, as she took in the bottle-glass-green wings arcing above her, with their jagged edges and delicate veins. 

The Queen hummed in approval. “Much better.” She pinched Darcy’s chin once more, forcing the girl to meet her eyes. “You will be certain to appear in this form when you enter the barrow from now on, little one, or there will be consequences.” 

She snapped her fingers, summoning back the fae who had led Darcy there in the first place. “Mallow, teach our little pixie how to glamour herself back human so she can go home when she pleases.”

  
  


It had not been quite so simple as the Queen had expected to teach a frightened and confused thirteen year old how to cast a long-lasting glamour over her entire body that could safely contain her wings and not simply render them invisible to human eyes, pixie or no. Darcy was trapped under the hill for several days with Mallow, eating honey-soaked bread and golden apples and watching the Dark Knight out of the corner of her eye, fascinated and comforted by his humanity.

On the second day, a raven-faced fey had dared to argue with the Queen about the particulars of some historical event that Darcy, having been raised by humans, was unfamiliar with. The Dark Knight was summoned and the raven-faced creature summarily despatched as Darcy watched in horrified fascination. She watched as the Knight wiped his bloody sword on his pants and then mechanically knelt down next to the corpse and began rubbing fresh blood into his breastplate, saw the resigned disgust in his eyes and the stiff movements of his hands. Without thinking, she walked over to one of the tables laden with food and doused one of the linen napkins with rosewater before walking over to the knight. He was just beginning to rise, having satisfied the Queen’s standing order, when Darcy held out the wet napkin in silent offer. 

He carefully took the cloth from her, a muttered “thank you” falling from his lips as he walked back to his post, scrubbing at his blood-stained hands.

  
Mallow tutted in disappointment from over her shoulder. “You need to be careful of doing things like that, little one. Being a changeling only gives you so much leeway with the Queen. Best not to play with her toys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a photoset for this chapter can be found [here!](http://pepperpottsblogs.tumblr.com/post/146472380555/we-played-fate-sharp-as-glass-and-twice-as)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And there, staring back at Darcy, was a face simultaneously foreign and familiar.  
> The Dark Knight, his long-lost arm slung around Steve, smiling.
> 
> Bucky Barnes, the only Howling Commando to give his life in service to his country.  
> Bucky Barnes, who fell from a train in Austria.  
> Bucky Barnes, who hadn’t died at all.

Darcy didn’t visit court often.

 

She wasn’t required to go--a changeling abandoned by the fae was under none of the usual obligations to swear fealty to the Seelie or Unseelie Queen.  Mallow had explained to Darcy that, being a pixie, she was considered a neutral: she could choose whether to align herself with either court. As a changeling, she had the additional freedom to choose both, or neither.

 

She traveled to the Seelie Court only once. 

It made a prettier picture than the Unseelie, to be sure, all flowers and honey and soft golden light, but underneath it was motivated by the same cruelty. They were simply less open about it. Their flowers, sweet-smelling as they were, were also weapons.

Darcy prefered the honest brutality of the Unseelie. They didn’t hide their bloodstained teeth.

 

Darcy had enough of hiding in the outside world.

 

She never took her glamour off and stretched her wings unless she was in a locked room with the blinds down and closed and it was full dark outside.  She went to court when those brief moments of freedom were no longer enough and she could feel a lingering itch between her wings.

 

She planned her trips to court carefully. Unless she was on a long break from school, she never went under the hill for more than 2 days. She always had a carefully crafted cover story. (She went “camping” a lot in areas without cell service.) 

 

The Dark Knight was a constant fixture at the Queen’s side. Darcy saw him kill three more times after her first trip to the barrow. 

  
  


 

 

When she moved into Stark Tower with Jane and realized that her quarters were monitored 24/7 by Tony Stark’s all-seeing AI, she nearly lost her mind. 

 

“What kind of fascist police state in training is this? You monitor us 24/7?”

“Woah, down girl.” Tony spluttered. “You can engage privacy mode whenever you want. No video or sound recording until you disable privacy mode.”

“JARVIS? Is that true?”

_ “Absolutely, Miss Lewis. You may engage privacy mode at any time and only you may choose to turn the monitoring back on once privacy mode has been engaged.” _

“Why so touchy about your privacy, Lewis? You into the kinky shit?” Tony asked with a leer.

“Yeah,” she deadpanned. “That and I need to keep my third nipple a secret.”

 

So every single night Darcy engaged privacy mode in her suite and removed her glamour and stretched her wings in the dark of her apartment. 

And every day she hid.

  
  
  


It all fell apart one rainy afternoon when Darcy decided to take a trip out the Brooklyn Museum. They had a new temporary exhibit in honor of hometown hero and national icon Steve Rogers, which Darcy, curious to a fault, couldn’t resist a pass through. So she eased her way between the throngs of school children and superhero groupies and old-school Brooklynites to take a look at photos of pre-serum Steve at Camp Lehigh, and a family portrait of him with his mother and father, and then a series of photos of Steve with the Howling Commandos. 

 

And there, staring back at her, was a face simultaneously foreign and familiar.

The Dark Knight, his long-lost arm slung around Steve,  _ smiling _ .

 

Bucky Barnes, the only Howling Commando to give his life in service to his country.

Bucky Barnes, who fell from a train in Austria.

Bucky Barnes, who hadn’t died at all.

  
  


 

Darcy spent the subway ride back to Manhattan plotting. 

She had to tell Steve. Steve was her friend, and this was something he needed to know. But she had to tell Steve about the Dark Knight without telling Steve about Darcy the Pixie, which was going to be a delicate operation requiring all of her powers of manipulation to pull off.

  
  


 

JARVIS informed her that Steve was in the team gym with Natasha, so she took the elevator to the proper floor, blood humming in anticipation. She pushed open the doors into the gym, walked up to the sparring mats, and waited for Steve and Natasha to pause in their flurry of movements.

At the first break she saw, Darcy called out, “Steve! I need to talk to you.”

He stepped away from Natasha and swiped a towel across his brow, shoulder muscles flexing, and shrugged. “What’s up?”

Darcy pursed her lips and glanced over at Natasha, calculating. Steve would almost certainly tell the team what she was about to say, but having Natasha around to watch her tell half-truths wasn’t ideal. Having said that, Natasha could always watch back the security feed even if she left, and if Darcy tried to  _ make _ her leave, it would only make her suspicious. 

She’d have to chance it.

 

Darcy adopted her best ‘I am very concerned’ facial expression and said, “You may want to sit down, Steve.”

Natasha tilted her head and eyed Darcy closely as Steve smirked and asked, “Darcy, are you pulling my chain?”

“It’s yanking. Yanking your chain. And no. I’m very serious.” She pointed over to the bench where the Avengers usually stashed their gym bags and ordered him to sit.

Steve blinked a bit at her harsh tone, but nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.” He cleared a spot for himself on the bench and sat, motioning for Darcy to get on with whatever she had to say.

“Bucky Barnes didn’t die when he fell from that train in Austria. I’ve seen him. I saw him, once, when I was younger.”

Steve swayed on the bench, muscles gone lax, until he grabbed at the edge of the seat with both hands to steady himself. “Where? When?”

“Wait.” Natasha’s voice cut through the scene, causing a shiver to run between Darcy’s (invisible) wings. “Are you certain, Darcy? It was not just someone who looked like him?”

“He was identical to the pictures I saw at the exhibit today. But he’s missing an arm now. He probably lost it in the fall.” 

Probably. Darcy didn’t know all the particulars of the Knight’s history and it was equally probable that his first mistress had taken it for some reason, or for no reason at all. He wouldn’t have been the first amputee at court and he was hardly the last.

“Where is he? Darce--” Steve’s voice broke.

This was going to be the hard part. “What I’m going to tell you is going to sound crazy. But I swear to you that it is the truth.” She took a deep breath, as though steeling herself. “He’s underneath a hill in New Jersey where the UnSeelie Court is located. He serves the Queen of the UnSeelie as her knight. I was taken under the hill by a faerie when I was thirteen and I saw him.”

Steve’s mouth worked fruitlessly for several moments before he finally choked out, “Faeries?”

“I know it sounds crazy, okay, but I promise--”

“SHIELD has been trying to track the fae practically since its inception.” Steve stared up at Natasha, who was looking directly at Darcy as she continued, “There has never been a confirmed case of contact, since they are so talented at disguising themselves, but there are rumors.”

Steve shook his head, clearly still struggling to grasp what Darcy had said. “You’re telling me that  _ faeries _ took Bucky and have been holding him all this time?”

Darcy winced. “These aren’t the faeries you remember from your nursery rhymes, Steve. Those are...very  _ very _ tame versions of reality. They are violent, and capricious, and manipulative. Nearly impossible to kill without magic.”

Natasha nodded grudgingly. “They are dangerous, from what we have gathered. Which isn’t much.”

“They don’t operate like any enemy you’ve ever fought before, although Loki  _ might _ be an exception. If you don’t understand them, you will never be able to get Bucky out.”

“Darcy, I fought against an alien army. I’m not wholly unfamiliar with fighting the inhuman.”

Darcy scoffed. “You had an entire team to back you up. And alien or no, you were fighting an army with a recognizable structure. The fae don’t work like that. Their favorite weapon is using you against yourself. You have a weakness, and you will reveal that weakness the second you go down the barrow. Bucky will be in more danger with you there than he has ever been over the past seventy years.” She tried to soften her tone as much as she could without drawing on her magic to persuade him. “You can’t punch your way out of this one, Steve. If you go in there half-cocked, they will eat you alive, very slowly, and make him watch for the fun of it.”

But Steve had finally regained his equilibrium and was in his proper Captain mode now, righteous and determined. “I can’t just leave him there, Darce. I have to go get him.”

“I know that, Steve, that’s why I’m telling you all this. Because I want you  _ both _ to come back. Most people who go down there to steal someone back...they lose. They make a bargain they don’t understand the consequences of, and they lose.”

Steve stood then, clearly ready to start arguing, but Natasha flicked him in the bicep. “Shut it, Rogers. Let her talk.” She turned to Darcy and nodded. “Tell me. Ignore him, and tell me everything I would need to know to plan an op.”

Darcy relaxed. It was so much  _ easier _ this way, without having to tiptoe around Steve’s emotions, without having to worry about him. “He has a magic arm now that looks like tree branches. It’s strong, indestructible, flexible. He wears black leather armor that is as hard as steel. He carries a sword. He belongs to the Queen, and must obey any of her commands. He kills when she tells him to, maims when she orders it, and any blood he spills he must rub into his armor. He is almost always at her side. They call him the Dark Knight; to them he has no other name. It is imperative that they never learn his true name, or yours. He first belonged to the UnSeelie Queen in Germany, but she lost him in a chess game to the UnSeelie Queen for the eastern lands of the United States. The German fae gave him his name and his arm, but they are also the ones who took out his heart. Without it, he doesn’t experience the same emotions he did before. He doesn’t love; he doesn’t grieve; he is not truly loyal, merely obedient.” 

She took a breath and finally turned to face Steve, because the rest was for him. “Faeries do not believe that they can love, they think that their hearts aren’t built for it. It is a human weakness that they view with contempt. They will know that you love him because you’ve come for him. They will lie to you. They will tell you that if you love him enough, if your love is strong enough, if you  _ serve _ well enough, that you can win him back. But your hands will be tied  _ because _ you love him and they will use your love against you at every turn. He cannot love you back without his heart; he cannot help himself and it is unlikely he will be able to help you. You cannot take him out of there without his heart. But it will be hidden somewhere, in a locked casket, and everyone will be told to make sure that you never get near it.” 

“Okay.” Steve said, expression pained. “I get his heart first, then I get him out of there.”

“And you cannot bring your shield, or any guns. Any weapons you bring down the barrow will eventually be used against you, or against him. Don’t give them anything better than what they have.”

“Okay, no shield.”

 

And the thing was, Steve was nodding and saying all the right things. He was “listening” to everything Darcy was saying but she didn’t think any of it was actually sinking into his cursedly thick skull. She could practically see the gears turning in his head as he started crafting some half-assed plan for getting Bucky back from the little faeries who had taken him and good lord, Darcy could  _ feel _ her wings twitching in agitation. 

 

“Steve, I think it would be better if someone else went down there to get his heart, someone less emotionally involved. They would have a better shot at getting the heart before the fae have a chance to get their guard up.”

Steve set his jaw and ground out, “Darcy, you’ve been a good friend to me, and I know you’re worried, but  _ I  _ need to go get him. He died--” Steve broke off and shook his head. “He’s only in this position because of me. Tell me where he is.”

Darcy rattled off directions to the hill, knowing it would be futile to resist. “Will you at least--” Darcy cast around for a ploy to slow him down “--will you at least sleep on it?  _ Think _ about what I said.”

He lay a heavy hand on her shoulder. “I will. But I think you’re overreacting. I’ve fought a lot worse than a bunch of faeries.”

Steve left then, pulling her into a quick hug that he probably imagined was comforting before heading off to his own rooms. 

 

Darcy bit her lip, frustrated. That hadn’t quite gone the way she had hoped.

 

Natasha’s voice rasped out from behind her. “You seem to know an awful lot about these faeries.”

Darcy swallowed. “I told you, one of them took me down the barrow when I was a child.” She turned around to face Natasha, only to see the spy scrolling through something on her phone.

“Yes, there’s an article in your local paper. You went missing for three days. Came home entirely on your own on day three with only superficial injuries, slightly dehydrated. They claimed you wandered into the woods chasing a stray cat and got lost.”

“That’s what I told them.”

That caught Natasha’s attention. “You didn’t even try to tell them the truth?”

“I was thirteen years old. I knew better than to talk about faeries. Best case they’d decide I ate something I shouldn’t have and started hallucinating, worst case they would institutionalize me. I didn’t feel like risking it.”

“So you entered the faery world once, when you were thirteen, and yet you’re certain that Bucky Barnes was there. No question in your mind.”

Darcy kept her expression steady as she murmured, “He made quite the impression.”

“But he could be dead. He could have been sent somewhere else. Why are you so sure he’s still there, a decade after you last saw him?”

  
Darcy had to tread carefully here, because of course Natasha was right. The Queen could have killed him, she could have traded him, she could have lost him to someone else in the ten years since Darcy first saw him. But Darcy had seen him, still at the Queen’s side, only a few weeks earlier. 

“Anything is possible, I guess. But it’s still the only lead Steve has.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy was still in her pajamas when Natasha knocked on her door the next morning.
> 
> “He’s gone.”

Darcy was still in her pajamas when Natasha knocked on her door the next morning.

 

“He’s gone.”

 

Darcy tamped down on the wave of impotent fury that welled up from her gut. It was perhaps the most fey thing she had ever seen Steve do--because of course he had kept his promise and slept on her suggestions, but she had never specified how  _ long _ he needed to sleep for. It wasn’t a caveat she had expected to need with honorable, earnest Steve. She’d planned on taking a second run at him before he left today in the hopes of keeping him from being entirely reckless on his rescue mission, but that was clearly a lost cause. 

Darcy sighed on a slow and controlled exhale and said, “Tell me he at least left the shield behind.”

Natasha nodded. “It’s still in the armoury. First thing I checked.”

Darcy slumped against the door frame, running through likely scenarios and options, resigned. There would be no keeping this from Natasha now; she needed an ally back at the Tower if this was going to work. “I’m going to have to go after him, but I’ll need to wait a few days so it isn’t obvious that I’m chasing him down.”

Natasha nodded and then said, tone casual as could be, “You never did say yesterday how many times you had gone to the faery court after that first visit.”

Darcy inclined her head in acknowledgement. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

Natasha smiled suddenly--a small, sharp quirk of her lips, nearly proud.

 

They both spoke in the language of things left unsaid.

 

“How much danger did you put yourself in by telling Steve?”

Darcy shrugged. “More than I would have liked.”

“Is this something you could have taken care of on your own?”

“Maybe.” She couldn’t be certain. “Might’ve had a better chance without his impulsive hindbrain ruining everything, but I’m told that serum did more than turn him into Mr. July beefcake material. So I’m sure there’s a chance he’ll prove useful at some point.”

“Possibly. How much danger is he going to be in until you can go keep him in line?”

“More than I would like.”

Natasha was clearly unimpressed with the vagueness of her answer. “Will they kill him?”

Darcy laughed, a bitter thing. “Of course not. You can’t play with your toys after you break them. If he causes too much trouble they’re more likely to take his heart. But they won’t kill him yet.”

Natasha grimaced. “We should come up with a cover story for why both of you are gone. Assuming you don’t want the others to know about your...relationship...with the fae.”

Darcy stepped back and motioned for Natasha to come inside. “By all means, step into my lair.”

 

***

 

“Hey, Janie?”

“Yeah?” Jane looked up from the equations she was writing to look at Darcy. “What’s up?”

Darcy sat gingerly on the stool across the lab table from Jane. “I’m gonna be out of town for a bit helping Steve with an undercover op.” 

Jane immediately looked horrified. “You’re not qualified for that! Who approved this?”

Darcy reached out and took Jane’s hand. “It’s in New Jersey. A kind of...underground scene in New Jersey that I used to frequent growing up. I still know people out there so I can get Steve in where he needs to go, get people to talk to him...Trust me, I’m the best option they have.”

Jane sighed and squeezed her hand. “You’re sure about this? Because I’ll back you up if you want to say no. I’ll make sure Thor does too.”

Darcy laughed. “No, Jane. It was actually my idea.” Darcy pulled her into a hug. “I promise I’ll do my best to come back in one piece.”

Jane punched her in the gut, lightly, more to make a point than to do any real harm. “You better.”

 

***

 

Natasha accompanied Darcy to the train station four days after Steve had left the Tower to catch a New Jersey Transit train out to the Burrow.

 

They stopped in the open center of the station and Natasha frowned slightly, looking over Darcy in her grey t-shirt dress and sneakers, duffle bag over one shoulder, unarmed and seemingly vulnerable. “You will check in with me every other day,” she reminded.

“I will,” Darcy promised. “Until the battery on my phone runs out. Then it’s going to be a matter of finding an excuse to go above ground to charge it. But I’ll let you know if I’m about to go dark.”

Natasha pursed her lips, clearly still dissatisfied with the only solution they had agreed upon. Darcy wouldn’t take any official SHIELD equipment down the barrow, but there also wasn’t any electricity to charge her phone. There were, at least, a few corners of the barrow that received weak cell reception, so Darcy could send a text message to Natasha to check in and keep her updated.

 

“I know you are under a lot of pressure already,” Natasha told her, “and I know this won’t be easy, but the team needs Steve in order to function properly. Promise me that you will bring him back, with or without Bucky.”

Darcy huffed out a quiet, amused laugh. “I promise. But for future reference, when extracting a promise from the fae, try to be more specific. I could bring him back to you in a meat pie and still keep that promise.” 

Darcy saw the muscles around Natasha’s eyes tighten, even as she fought to keep her expression neutral. 

“Lucky for you, I’m a terrible faery. But I still won’t make a promise that I can’t guarantee keeping.” She resettled her duffle bag on her shoulder. “I will do everything in my power to return Steve in the condition in which he left. And I will do everything in my power to make sure Bucky is with him when that happens.”

“You too, Darcy. You make sure you come back safely, too.” Natasha stepped forward to grasp her chin. “Do not fall on your sword trying to prove something. A little self-interest is not always a bad thing.”

  
Darcy smirked as the started to walk backwards towards her track. “You sure you’re not a faery?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Darcy stared down at the patch of slightly too-green grass that marked the entrance to the UnSeelie Court and took a deep breath, whispering a quiet plea for luck before pulling back the turf and tumbling inside."

Darcy stared down at the patch of slightly too-green grass that marked the entrance to the UnSeelie Court and took a deep breath, whispering a quiet plea for luck before pulling back the turf and tumbling inside.

 

She landed on her feet in a crouch, straightening slowly in the empty passageway and batting a few errant fireflies out of her face. She cast a glamour to alter her t-shirt dress into a copper and moss colored dress with an open back for her wings before removing the glamour that disguised her pixie features. Her wings flashed out to either side, fluttering and stretching, and her skin paled until it was nearly translucent.  Her hair grew darker and took on an emerald sheen where the light hit it. She cast a new glamour to style her hair and give her complexion the iridescent golden glow that was fashionable amongst the court pixies before heading further into the barrow.

  
  
  


 

The throne room was pulsing with energy, packed with bodies. Darcy knew that many of the fae from the outlying areas would flock to the Barrow for Samhain, and hoped that the crowd might be an advantage rather than a hindrance for her maneuvers. 

  
  


Darcy had learned to wear sturdy, thick-soled shoes after that first trip under the hill. She had learned what it felt like to leave bloody footprints on dirt floors, and to step on fallen nettles and thorns--the slickness and the stinging. So she didn’t flinch as her boots squelched through a puddle of spilled mead tinted red on her way through the room--it was nothing new. She kept her shoulders back and her face impassive as she scanned the crowd for Steve and Bucky’s faces, reaching out to pluck a few silver grapes from the table at the center of the room on her way past and tossing them into her mouth with studied flippancy.

 

The crowd thinned as she drew nearer to the dais and the throne, and she spotted Steve off to her left, just off the raised edge of the dais, his gaze fixed firmly on Bucky, who was in his usual position just to right of the Queen where she sat on her throne.

 

“Well who do we have here?” the Queen’s voice rang out, crystalline and echoing. “Our little changeling returns at last.”

“Your Grace.” Darcy curtsied low, grateful for the curtain of hair that hid her from Steve, if only for a moment. “I had hoped to remain at court for the holiday, if it please you. It has been too long since I had a proper sojourn amongst the fae.”

“It has indeed,” the Queen intoned. “I shall have a room prepared for you.” She glanced sharply at one of the servants at her feet, who promptly scurried off down the eastern tunnel. “We have a new guest who may be of some interest to you.”

Darcy kept her body relaxed, her voice as casual as she could muster and asked, “Why might that be, your grace?”

The queen inclined her head over towards where Steve stood, jaw clenched and eyes bright. “Pretty, isn’t he? More to your...taste, I suppose, than our usual crowd.” 

 

The Queen never passed up an opportunity to remind Darcy of her position betwixt and between worlds, of how distasteful Darcy’s preference for human company was to the rest of her kind.

 

“He’s lovely,” Darcy acknowledged. “What does he seek?”

 

Steve was not the first human to spend time under the barrow, and they all wanted something--to get someone back, to cure someone of an illness, a way to make someone fall in love with them. Darcy had never seen any such story end well.

 

The Queen’s grin turned sharp, malicious. “Apparently he desires our dear Knight. Simply wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Humans are a stubborn bunch,” Darcy acknowledged. “And too often ruled by their emotions.”

“Well you would know better than the rest of us, wouldn’t you, changeling?”

“As you say, Your Grace,” Darcy ground out. “May I be excused?”

 

The queen waved her off, dismissive and bored, and turned to speak to a sharp-nosed faery on her left. Darcy curtsied regardless, as it was expected of her, and she would prefer not to anger the queen so soon after her arrival so long as it could be helped.

 

Steve caught her gaze as she straightened, luminous and self-righteous amidst a sea of gnarled and misshapen fae. 

  
“Great,” Darcy muttered to herself as she wound her way back to the drink table, desperate for a bit of mead to take the edge off. “Because I don’t have enough to deal with as it is.”

 

 

 

Steve managed to corner her a few minutes later in a dimly lit corner of the room.

“You lied to me.”

Darcy, worried about watchful eyes, dragged Steve off into a passageway that was rarely used before answering. “No. I never lied to you. I told you the beginning of a story. You assumed that you knew the ending.”

“A lie of omission, then.”

Darcy scoffed. “Says the guy who made sure to skip out of town before I woke up because he didn’t want to tell me to my face that he didn’t care to hear what I had to say.”

Steve gestured at her wings and then down to the rest of her body. “I don’t even know what to think anymore. Is any of that real? Is this what you really look like?”

Darcy’s wings twitched in anger--a tell he wouldn’t be able to read just yet, fortunately, but it was only a matter of time. “More or less.”

Steve stood firm, arms crossed and face disapproving until Darcy finally sighed and shattered the remaining glamours. Her fey clothing transformed back into the grey t-shirt dress she had worn on the train out to New Jersey, her curls fell limp, her lipstick and eyeliner disappeared, her complexion dulled and paled, losing the artificial golden lustre. She held out her arms and spinned for inspection.

“You’ll simply have to imagine the wings for now,” Darcy ground out. “I never intended to wear this dress without the glamour and I have no intention of injuring myself for the sake of your wounded pride.”

Steve had the good grace to look sheepish for a moment at that, before he spoke again. “Are we even--” Steve grimaced. “Are we even friends? You said that faeries can’t love, that they’re incapable of it.”

 

Darcy wanted to be furious. She wanted to summon up some kind of righteous anger and to smack him and to  _ rage _ . But it was a fair question. 

 

“I never said they  _ can’t _ , I said they don’t believe that they can. I didn’t know I was fey until I was thirteen, so it depends on whether you believe that love is something that you learn or an instinct. Whether or not I’m capable of loving people the way that you are…Do I really love Jane or have I learned how to imitate it well enough to fool myself?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. What I do know is that as far as the fae are concerned, I have stayed with Jane because I owe her a debt and I can’t leave until it is paid. Debts and payments make sense to them. Affection is a slipperier concept.” She took a shaky breath and continued, “For what it’s worth, I consider us friends. I never would have bothered to tell you about the Knight and put myself in danger if I didn’t.”

Steve eyed her carefully. “You could have got him out yourself, couldn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

  
She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Might’ve been easier without you, though.” She smirked at him, trying to lighten the mood. “Really, if I had my pick of human companions I would have chosen Natasha for this particular endeavor. But I suppose you’ll have to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a photoset for this chapter can be found [ here ](https://pepperpottsblogs.tumblr.com/post/154921136285/we-played-fate-sharp-as-glass-and-twice-as) on tumblr!


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